#bagpipes do sound nightmarish yes

[tinkisspiraling]

MAG 163 SPOILERS

“What’s out here?”

“Nightmares”

*BAGPIPES START PLAYING*

That seems - fitting

[yikes-strikes-again]

rating: gen word count: 2271 tags: angst, hurt/comfort, light on the comfort part, canon compliant, the slaughter, the corruption, season 5 spoilers, episode: e163, spoilers for episode: e163, spooky eye powers             summary: Martin learns exactly what happens if Jon doesn't give his statements. Inspired by a line from episode 177. Takes place between episodes 163 and 164.

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Buried in the wreckage of the blasted wasteland, a typewriter began clicking rapidly.

With soles caked in mud, they crunched through what must have been leagues of the trenches - though, obviously, there was no way to tell. No way to tell how far they had traveled or how far they had yet to go. The Panopticon-Institute remained on the horizon, ever-distant and always looming.

The sounds of war were not far away. Once in a while, artillery fire would tear the silence apart, ripping through the walls of bunkers and causing a throbbing, painful ringing in the ears. Jon and Martin would hold onto each other for support, though often they would still fall into the wet and sloshing ground, caking their clothing in another layer of grime. But here, the danger was less immediate than it was miles ago. Slower, in wounds rather than weapons.

Countless soldiers nursed the bandaged stumps of lost limbs, ones either amputated or blown off. In the case of the former, the procedure rarely prevented infection from spreading through the victim’s veins with each beat of their heart, or cleanly excised the deepest strains of necrotized tissue. They knew this, of course. They knew that they would only get sicker, and the knowledge terrorized them even more than the certain death that lay not a meter above.

Clouds of flies thicker than pudding swarmed around the dead. Well, one hoped they were dead. It was hard to tell when everyone seemed to be on the verge of permanent collapse, either from mortal injury, illness, or an overdose of grief. It didn’t matter why - when someone laid down in this place, they never got up again.

It was calmer on this side of the trenches. Quieter. But in the quelling of the chaos, it gave Martin a chance to process how awful it all was, and that was worse.

He looked at Jon. If he had to guess, he’d say that Jon was faring worse than Martin was. There was a hard set to his shoulders, and he spoke little save to warn Martin of danger or obstacles. When he did speak, his voice was terse and irritable. Martin rarely got a glimpse of his eyes, but when he did, he saw that Jon’s pupils were erratic and searching.

Both of them had been quiet for days, weeks perhaps, ever since Jon had ranted like a madman in that bunker, surrounded by all those catatonic people. Martin didn’t understand  why  he had to do that, why he was compelled to speak of all the awful things that were already upon them, only that something bad would happen if he didn’t. He had made it clear that Jon would find no audience for his ramblings in Martin, and Jon had accommodated that thus far.

Martin stopped at the turn of the trench, finding a more gentle slope of the wall to rest his shoulder upon, though the soil was damp and rancid-smelling. He didn't feel fatigue, but his shoes were not meant for hiking, and they were uncomfortable. He was soaked to the bone, filthy, and freezing cold, and he really wanted to know when he could stop being that way.

Jon stopped so suddenly that his boots skidded on the mud and he had to sway to keep his balance.

“What is it now, Martin?”

There was no resignation to his voice, no apathy or even frustration, unlike before. Just pure, stifled anger, and the cryptic storm brewing from behind his eyes.

Martin looked at him pleadingly. “Can’t you tell me anything about how long we’ve still got to walk? At least until we get out of… this place.”

Jon sighed the sigh of a parent who had been asked “Are we there yet?” by their impatient child one too many times. “Like I said the first two thousand times, time and space  do not exist in the way they once did. When the world was whole and there existed minds who knew not of terror.” He cringed almost imperceptibly, and scrubbed at his temples with his palms. “As much as I hate to hear the phrase myself, we will get there when we  get  there.”

It felt silly to complain about someone’s bad attitude when they were in a literal hellscape, but Martin didn’t like the way he’d started speaking through gritted teeth. He wanted respite from this particular nightmare, yes, but he also wanted to know why Jon was so angry.

Martin didn’t get the sense that it would do any good to ask him, though.

He sighed. “It’s been so long.  What if we never get there? Just wandering in circles in a never-ending trench.”

“Well, Martin, we  will never get there if we keep stopping to burrow a nightmare and ceaseless frenzy.”

He paused to consider that. He figured he’d heard wrong - his hearing was still a bit muted from the gunfire. “What?”

“I said, we’ll never get there if gangrene blisters or sanguine bagpipes.”

“What?  What the hell does that mean?”

Jon made an irritated noise, then spoke slowly as if talking to someone who was very stupid. “Agony bore a bloody sickle for crushing the sleepless.”

Martin stared at him, and narrowed his eyes, gripped by a dawning horror that had nothing to do with the disease and death that surrounded him. “Jon, you’re not making any sense.”

Some of the anger faded from Jon’s expression. Then, suddenly, he clutched at his head with both hands as if in pain. His eyes widened, focusing briefly on Martin before returning to the million things that only he could see.

“Sever,” he said pointedly. And, as if spurred on by something, he continued, both voice and body shaking with intensity. “Limbs metallic see bloated warhead and vicious gas spitting cauterize through. Spleen pale cannon warhead bile where tetanus sinews. And gore and ring and soldier visceral from bodies brother teeth for rancid crimson darkness.” He spoke with such terrible certainty, as if he fully expected Martin to comprehend the meaning of every word.

The corners of Martin’s mouth became taut, but since smiling requires the pretense of happiness, he did not smile. “Listen, Jon, I know we’re both under a lot of stress, but this is a really bad way to try and lighten the mood, okay? It’s not funny. You’re scaring me.” He drew a sharp and shaking breath and released it in a hollow imitation of laughter. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? Are you just taking something out on m—”

“Chaotic laughter and screeching god.” Jon’s eyes were on him, but they weren’t looking at him. They were wild, desperate. Something awful was happening to him, something that caused him to forget how to stand, that ceaselessly filled his mind with secondhand terrors, that stole his voice and gave it to the neverending flood of words that rose like bile from his throat. “Iron hands, jettison liver, with heroic terror bullets and mottled rage buzzing, burning and lungs gone. Necrotized gurney which hell hath nuclear rot aching, whose shivering eye orders and despairs, immobile river filth screaming for prison and tear—”

“Jon, stop!” Martin pushed off the wall and stumbled over to where Jon had slipped onto the filthy earth. He shook him. “Snap out of it!”

“— off running, smoke and cloth the bacteria acrid, with hungry singing comrade forever hidden. Writhing from crater, sobbing but the fever moans flaking to clinging, melting daggers. Helpless pathway churning through exploding infinity—”

Martin was nearing his wits’ end. He dragged Jon, who went limp, into a nearby dugout, so tiny that sunlight still shone across most of its floor. He tried to block out the onslaught of babbled nonsense that somehow evoked a thousand nightmarish images as clear as day, but Jon’s voice had taken on that quality that made it impossible not to listen. He continued to shake him with repetitive, mechanical regularity, but as the words bore into his brain Martin’s movements grew weak and yielding.

Jon lay on Martin’s lap, staring far beyond the dirt ceiling. “Gorging jaws of metal death surround your blood-borne reach towards distant jargon, but surreal enemy adrenaline has harrowed pathological exaltations. Barbed manslaughter. Feeding warfare. Stinging trigger…”

His eyes fell to him for a split second. “Martin,” he said, and Martin remembered to breathe. But the moment was gone as quick as it had come, and Jon was launched into another disjointed tirade.

If the hands of his watch spun as reliably as they once had, Martin might have found that he sat crouched in that dugout for exactly six hours and thirty-four minutes, keeping Jon’s back out of the mud. But, for what it was worth, it felt like years. Jon continued his nonsensical ranting, scarcely stopping to breathe, and from the way he desperately spat the words one got the feeling that he wished he didn’t have to. His voice rose and fell at random, reaching sudden and unpredictable climaxes of raving and shouting before settling back into a listless murmur. Trying to ignore him was an exercise in futility. Every few words a new, terrible image would implant itself into Martin’s mind, and then another, and another, together weaving a tapestry of terror from the thread of Jon’s omnipotent train of thought. He couldn’t stop listening, and Jon couldn’t stop talking, so whenever Martin’s thoughts weren’t drowned out by the bile of the Beholding they were filled with despair.

Would this never end? Were they doomed to rot in this place, their minds slowly unraveled by the power of the Eye filtered only by Jon’s droning voice? Would they never move again, like all the rest in this awful place, locked in a stony embrace like some warped parody of The  Pietà?

Martin couldn’t know. But in between terrors, it was all he could imagine as tears ran down his face.

It was a small mercy that this particular fear of Martin’s wasn't due to come about just yet. The first clue was that the flood of words had slowed to a trickle. The second was that when Jon paused for breath, it was deeper and less hurried than before. His voice had lost its former vigor, and it was all Martin could hope that he had finally started to exhaust himself.

“... never respite from wretched hope… singe a coagulated daylight swarm… justice not for careening wails… farewell… slaughter,” he paused, panting. “Finished” was too hopeful a word, and his voice carried no note of finality.

But there was a blessed silence. Martin expected it to end at any moment, but it stretched on as the seconds passed. There were distant cries of war, and the sound of Jon trying to make up for the breath he’d lost, but it all faded into nothing in the presence of the euphoric silence.

Several minutes passed this way, and it was only then that Martin dared to speak with the expectation that he’d get a response.

“Jon,” he began, finally daring to make eye contact - his otherworldly gaze had been far too intense to meet, before - and found that Jon was seeing him again. “What… happened?”

He blinked at Martin. There was another silence, shorter and more deliberate than the last, but less comfortable. “I—” He cleared his throat. “I think… I just…” He grabbed his temples with both hands and winced, and Martin pulled them both out of the light.

A moment’s migraine, and Jon collected himself. “There’s just… so much. Fear. Everywhere we go, from everyone in the world. I see it all. I  feel  it all.” Martin listened passively, despair replaced by a deep frustration. He knew this, and Jon knew how he felt about being his… receptacle for it all. But he didn’t interrupt.

“We have been through a domain of The Slaughter, and are now passing into one of The Corruption. I’ve been… accumulating more and more of The Slaughter’s fear all this time, and now that we’re leaving it… I suppose it wanted me to let it out. Now or never.” He paused. “And... I  have  to let it out, willingly, or else…”

“This happens.”

Jon sighed. “Apparently.”

Martin considered this, wondering if Jon could see the tear tracks that had left clean paths down his otherwise dirty face.

“Why didn’t you just give a statement? You know…  before  it was forced out of you?”

Jon looked at his hands for a long time. Then, in a small, guilty voice, he said, “I was trying to keep it inside.”

“Keep it inside?  Why?  ”

“I thought…” He covered his mouth in the gesture of one whose face burned with shame. “I thought I could control it, if I just willed it hard enough. These trenches… too long. Too narrow. There was nowhere for you to go. I didn’t want to stop, and I didn’t want to leave you.”

Martin stopped, and he softened. “Jon.” He sighed through his nose, and placed his hand on the back of Jon’s head. Then he brought him up into an embrace. “This was worse.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” he murmured into Martin’s neck.

“... I’m just glad you’re okay.”

They stayed like that for an undefinable amount of time, relishing the only avenue of comfort available to them anymore. Then, with Jon clinging to Martin for support, they climbed to their feet, and set out under the sky again, which had at some point shifted from violent red to a sickly yellow. A new understanding dawned on them both, mostly Martin, who resolved to allow Jon his space when he needed to… vent.

He only wished the knowledge hadn’t had to come from personal experience.

Something lurking in the ruins ripped the page off the typewriter, and its keys never made a noise again.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG163 /X_X/

- Tolkien jokes (and the Institute/Jonah being Sauron) aside… I really loved the detail of the tower:

(MAG163) MARTIN: Right. I just… [FOOTSTEPS] Don’t like being out here. ARCHIVIST: Hm! You see that tower, way off in the distance? MARTIN: Yeah. [PAUSE] [SIGH] It’s watching us, isn’t it? [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: The Panopticon and the Institute. Merged into something entirely new. MARTIN: Wha–, what? No, th–there’s, there’s no way we could see it from here. We, we must still be a hundred miles from the border, never mind London! ARCHIVIST: You could see that tower from anywhere on Earth. And it can see you. And if you walk towards it, eventually you’ll get there. But you have to go through everything in-between.

The premise of the Panopticon was to allow a guardian to watch over every prisoner in the complex, and to make a point that they could be being watched at any time. Funnily, it feels like a logical extension that in the nightmarish world, that role would expand into something absolutely concrete: people are constantly watched and acutely aware of the single point watching them, and it’s not tied to any physical or geographical law, it’s just the way it is, going even further than Jonah’s own powers.

Interesting that the Institute-Panopticon seems to be its Own Thing, since Beholding is already supposed to watch everything on its own?

(MAG160) ARCHIVIST: [HINT OF A COLD SMILE] The whole world is afraid, Martin. Because of me. And The Watcher… drinks it all in. MARTIN: … Jon? ARCHIVIST: Look at the sky, Martin! Look at the sky. It’s looking back! [BROKEN LAUGHTER]

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: They… I see most of the suffering around here. When it’s quiet, it just… it’s like… I can see it, like I’m watching all of it. MARTIN: You haven’t been opening the curtains? ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t need to. “It” can see us here, and… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] And I can see out as well.

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “Outside, it is raining. Heavy drops fall, ice-cold and laced with salt; tears of voyeuristic delight from The Eyes that see and drink in all […] This place wishes to be our tomb. But The Eye does not wish that. No. [STATIC RISES] The Eye wishes instead that it be my chrysalis. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] It is time that I emerge…” [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] ARCHIVIST: [CRIES OUT] [COLLAPSES]

- Oookay, so, confirmed and demonstrated that time…

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: Uh, o–okay, eh. [PAUSE] How are you feeling today? ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE] Define… “today”. [CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: “How are you feeling in general”, then? ARCHIVIST: … Unchanged. [PAUSE] I don’t know if it’ll ever change again…!

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] can’t. I–I–I can’t, I–I don’t think I do anymore… “Sleep”. [EXHALE] How long’s it been, now? MARTIN: I don’t know. It’s not like there are days to count anymore. All the clocks have stopped, and…

(MAG163) MARTIN: How long have we been walking? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Fourteen hours and… twenty-three minutes. MARTIN: What, seriously? ARCHIVIST: Yes. I… don’t think it means much out here, though.

… and space…

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “There is a place, deep in the heart of Fear, where you trap yourself and claim that it is safety. [STATIC DECREASES] It was once a cabin, and professes still to be such, but as with all in this new world that promises respite… it is a trap. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] The land outside is warped and twisted by the touch of those things that feed on your suffering, and behind those rough wooden planks, [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] it seems they cannot reach you.

(MAG163) MARTIN: Ssso. … Are we going to walk, all the way to London? ARCHIVIST: If you know an alternative, I’d be [HUMOURLESS CHUCKLE] very keen to hear it…! MARTIN: I mean… cars? You know, planes, trains, automobiles? ARCHIVIST: It wouldn’t help. MARTIN: Alright – a boat, then. ARCHIVIST: Geography doesn’t work anymore. Space… doesn’t work. MARTIN: … Alright. So what does that mean? ARCHIVIST: It means the journey will be the journey, regardless of how we choose to make it. MARTIN: Right. And you’re sure we can’t just, you know… [RUSTLING] speed it up a bit? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] No. [SIGH]

… have been messed up and are following another logic, though Jon is somehow able to keep track (of where they are, of time still working as a continuum). Though, I kind of hope that Martin’s maps manage to help somehow:

(MAG162) MARTIN: And, I found some rope in the attic, and I packed that with the maps. ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLING] Uh, Martin, I… MARTIN: No, no; I, I know what you’re going to say. [RUMMAGING] “What good are maps when the very Earth has…” and blah blah blah… ARCHIVIST: W– Uh, yes– MARTIN: But I’ve, I’ve packed them anyway because you never know.

Because gdi, give Martin credit for a good idea every once in a while! ;w;

(- I’M STUPIDLY “!!!!!” AT MARTIN SUGGESTING THEY COULD TRAVEL BY BOAT… Could we maybe have a tiny chance of “meeting” the Tundra at some point…

Also, did Martin assume that they could get someone to drive them by car/plane/train all the way to London, or did he nail the dream-logic that they could use them as long as they believe they can drive them?)

- Same with sleeping&rest, they’re definitely not a necessity anymore:

(MAG161) MARTIN: You should get some sleep. [CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] can’t. I–I–I can’t, I–I don’t think I do anymore… “Sleep”. [EXHALE] How long’s it been, now? MARTIN: I don’t know. It’s not like there are days to count anymore. All the clocks have stopped, and… [DISTANT HOWL] ARCHIVIST: Well, I haven’t yet. I get… tired, but it doesn’t feel the same. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] Probably for the best. Sleep doesn’t look… pleasant. MARTIN: Nnno, it’s… it’s not. ARCHIVIST: I couldn’t wake you. […] MARTIN: Well, just as well I don’t remember my dreams. ARCHIVIST: I do. MARTIN: Uh– What? ARCHIVIST: They… I see most of the suffering around here. When it’s quiet, it just… it’s like… I can see it, like I’m watching all of it.

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “If you had need to eat, no doubt there would be food; if you had need to sleep, no doubt the beds would be welcoming. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] But you have need of neither; and so you sit in your meagre comfort and belief of security with nothing to do, nothing to distract your mind from the agonies that lie just beyond your window.”

(MAG163) MARTIN: … Oh, I’m knackered. ARCHIVIST: Are you? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] MARTIN: I– … Hm. … Well. Okay, well, no, no, I suppose not; but, I–I think I should be. ARCHIVIST: Yup! MARTIN: How long have we been walking? […] We should… probably rest. ARCHIVIST: Maybe. I… I don’t know, I– … I don’t know if we can – “rest”. It feels more like… hm, “waiting”. […] ARCHIVIST: “Next to his bleeding corpse, Charlie wakes from what passes for sleep in this place.”

It sounds like it’s now a habit/reflex, or almost a narrative device in people’s nightmares?

- I hope that Martin is keeping a running count of the times Jon Is Being Ominous, because we’ve already heard it twice:

(MAG161) MARTIN: O–kay, we’ll just file that under… ominous, for now.

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: You could see that tower from anywhere on Earth. And it can see you. And if you walk towards it, eventually you’ll get there. But you have to go through everything in-between. MARTIN: … You’re being ominous again!

- gASP, JON, HOW COULD YOU!!

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Well… Put your fingers in your ears then, I, I suppose. MARTIN: [SNORT] Fine, and what about them? ARCHIVIST: … They don’t even know we’re here. We’re not part of their nightmare. [DRIP] MARTIN: … Right. [SHUFFLING] [DRIP] ARCHIVIST: Martin…? [DRIP] Martin? [DRIP] Martin, I hate your tea, and wish you made coffee instead…! [DRIP] … Alright, then. [INHALE] [SIGH]

I love how “Jon drinks coffee (in fact: no, he doesn’t)” is almost becoming a running joke at this point: Melanie had mentioned that “Jon likes his black” when trying to poison Elias’s (MAG098), Basira had shoved one dow on Jon’s table in MAG140, but… presumably, Melanie was bullshitting and Basira was not providing any comfort. From Jon himself, “I’m rather glad I don’t really drink coffee.” (MAG074)

- Another bit of Jon’s guilt / feeling responsible about what happened:

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Don’t worry, Jon. You’ll get used to it here – in the world that we have made.” […] ARCHIVIST: [HINT OF A COLD SMILE] The whole world is afraid, Martin. Because of me. And The Watcher… drinks it all in.

(MAG161) MARTIN: I’m sorry. ARCHIVIST: It’s not… You’re not the one who ended the world…! […] MARTIN: Jon, it’s not your fault… ARCHIVIST: Martin, can we not do this again. MARTIN: Sorry. ARCHIVIST: I’m just… I’m mourning a world I killed…! MARTIN: I know… ARCHIVIST: And we’re all trapped in its rotting corpse…! […] I am an avatar of voyeuristic terror, whose unquestioned craving for knowledge has condemned the entire world… to an eternity of torment, “healthy” i–isn’t, i–it’s not…!

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: [STATIC RISES] “‘Hold each other,’ it croons, ‘Be happy. But know always that this happiness is a lie, [RUMBLE OF THUNDER] built on the squirming bones of those whose suffering you have caused.’” [STATIC DECREASES]

(MAG163) MARTIN: … They’re not… real? [VOICES SHOUTING IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLING] No…! They’re real; they were… normal people before the– … Before me.

- I KNOW that Smirke’s taxonomy is subjective, doesn’t work on everything, etc. etc. but :w The hell I’ll stop slapping his labels on things.

Naturally, the episode was bringing The Slaughter to mind: it’s not the first time we have heard the bagpipes during a statement (it had been the case in MAG125), and music&war had been an old association since “The Piper” (MAG007), put on the foreground again in MAG137.

(MAG007, Staff Sergeant Clarence Berry) “Yet [Wilfred] got to know the war in a way I never did. He’s certainly the only person I know that ever saw The Piper. […] None of it seemed to produce any reaction in him, and instead he turned to me and after a long while he simply said: “I met the war.” […] It struck me that perhaps he was describing some dreadful mirage that had come upon him as he lay in that wretched place, and I asked him to tell me what the war looked like. I remember exactly what he said. He told me it had three faces. One to play its pipes of scrimshawed bone, one to scream its dying battle cry and one that would not open its mouth, for when it did blood and sodden soil flowed out like a waterfall. Those arms that did not play the pipes were gripping blades and guns and spears, while others raised their hands in futile supplication of mercy, and one in a crisp salute. It wore a tattered coat of wool, olive green where it was not stained black, and beneath, nothing could be seen but a body beaten, slashed and shot and until nothing remained but the wounds themselves.”

(MAG125, Sergeant Terrance Simpson) “I moved back to Macclesfield shortly afterwards. It pretty much ended my marriage, since my wife is why I’d moved up to Inverness in the first place. … But I… just couldn’t go on up there. … I can’t stand the sound of bagpipes. [DISTANT BAGPIPES] … And sometimes… at night… I still hear sheep, in the distance.” [BAGPIPES FADE] ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. Hm! An Englishman returning from Scotland with a fear of bagpipes and sheep. I’m sure we can all relate…!

Though: rather than “The Slaughter”, this statement seems to be dealing with the overall horrors of war? So if it was more specifically one thing amongst the ones we had met, I would say it was The Piper at work, but most likely The War itself, overlapping on multiple Fears from Smirke’s taxonomy? Or just a place’s own nightmares, traumatised by the horror of war from the past – though this one encompassed every worst and most violent aspect of every war – from the past and the present?

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: Nightmares. [BANG IN THE DISTANCE] Come on – that trench is our first. MARTIN: What tren– [BANG IN THE DISTANCE] … Where did that– … Why is that here? ARCHIVIST: In the world as was… we wouldn’t be too far from Kinloss Barracks. So instead, we get the trench. […] ““There is a wound in the earth. [STATIC DECREASES] A bayonet gouge, scored through the soft and sodden mud for uncounted miles. A trench that marks the front line of a war that has no name. It has always been raging, deep in the hearts of the powerful and those that thirst to see bodies piled high in their name. And now, it has a battleground: a thousand pointless conflicts and bitter stalemates, stitched together like a triaged chest wound. It is a butchered border, a thin and punctured membrane between the unending meat grinder, and the terrified victims it longs for. You may find this trench reaching all across the world, and it will never stop, never be satisfied, never think of peace.”

(We got drones making anonymous kills, tanks running over people, explosions, gunshots, gas, medical malpractice, mentions of torture, punishments for deserters, famine, exploitation by the upper-class.)

Overall, using Smirke’s taxonomy, I felt Slaughter, Desolation (torture and losses of the dear ones, boiling in the tank), Eye (drone watching and being inscrutable in return – though this one was able to harm you), Corruption (the medical tent), Stranger/Spiral (enemies twisted into being Other and inhuman, although we knew there were people on both fronts), Buried (under the tank), maybe a bit of End (fear of death – people were unaware that it wasn’t permanent? I’m still wondering about what avatars of The End would think of the new world…).

Jon did say they would have to go through multiple nightmares:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: You could see that tower from anywhere on Earth. And it can see you. And if you walk towards it, eventually you’ll get there. But you have to go through everything in-between. MARTIN: … You’re being ominous again! ARCHIVIST: Sorry. MARTIN: [HUFF] ARCHIVIST: Sorry. MARTIN: What do you mean, “everything”? What’s out here? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] [FAINT CREAKING] ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] [BAGPIPES IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: Nightmares. [BANG IN THE DISTANCE] Come on – that trench is our first. MARTIN: What tren– [BANG IN THE DISTANCE] … Where did that– … Why is that here? ARCHIVIST: In the world as was… we wouldn’t be too far from Kinloss Barracks. So instead, we get the trench. MARTIN: … How do you know all this stuff? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: Not sure…! I just do. [BANGS IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: Jon… I’m scared. ARCHIVIST: … Yes… That’s the idea…!

(Big big Divina Commedia vibe overall, with Jon’s “The journey will be the journey, regardless of how we choose to make it” and the premise of two people going through multiple layers before they’ll be able to reach an apotheosis through the final destination.)

And on the one hand, it doesn’t mean that there will be 12 or 13 (depending on if the cabin counted) Fears-fuelled territories to go through before reaching the 14th, the Institute, given that Smirke’s categorisation was what it is. On the other hand… Jonah still used the division in 14 in his incantation, so that could have consequences in how the Fears manifest: intertwined, but with a strong dominant one every time.

… If there is a Corruption-dominant one, might be really hard on Martin&Jon given their experience with Prentiss, but the worst might be a Lonely one…

(Is Daisy currently haunting a Hunt nightmare, in a forest or something?)

- Last episode had given us tips about the new world through Gertrude&Gerry’s speculation last episode (MAG162: “If one were to – genuinely – press through, I suspect they would rewrite them wholesale; most likely making them… utterly incomprehensible to any survivors. They, they might still need us human enough to be afraid, but beyond that… Let’s just surmise that petty rules like space or time would be unlikely to factor into the proceedings. They might even stop death entirely, deny us the one last escape; keeping us… alive and afraid – forever.”), and indeed, I felt like it helped to follow what was happening.

The Trench’s nightmare shows us memories being rewritten to fit a narrative that would hurt its victims the most (“Ishaan remembers the recruiters. […] But he didn’t know about this war, that had always been raging and would never stop.” / “Charlie saw Ryan, who he’d known since childhood – though the other details were hazy. Ryan gave him a thumbs-up and an encouraging smile – before his face exploded inwards to a sniper’s bullet, peppering the boat with shards of bone and gore.” Did Ryan even exist, or was the memory just created to make Charlie feel the pain and the loss?). Like in a dream, scenes can skip from place to place with no particular logic, only forming a succession of diversified anguish (“He could not move, and as he waited for the shot that would take him… his legs fell away in fear. Now, he is in a helicopter, strapped in tight and unable to move.”). Like in a dream, metaphor becomes reality: The Enemy being “rats” and “pigs” mean that they become literally that through other victims’ eyes (“Sometimes, in the distance, Hasanna sees them. The enemy, their skin rough, dark and scaly; their faces twisted around cruel tusks, viciously sharpened teeth, and a pair of beady red eyes. Their lips are smeared crimson with the blood of children, and their greatest delight… is to pluck the eyes of the innocent with their bayonets. To call them monsters is the simple truth. They feel no pain, no remorse, and seek nothing but carnage. […] Alexei in turn looks out from deep in the trench. He catches sight of the enemy, their shrivelled rat-like heads causing the bile to rise in his throat.”) Like in a dream, dying doesn’t mean an absolute ending, and people seem to respawn (“Charlie is immediately pulled under its tread. He has a moment of shocked horror, before being reduced to a smear in the mud. […] Next to his bleeding corpse, Charlie wakes from what passes for sleep in this place. A sergeant is yelling at him, screaming for him to take his gun and get into the waiting transport.”)

It’s interesting to note that, in that logic, nightmares get interrelated, and that everyone’s actions have the power to make it worse for others: they don’t have a choice… and yet still seem to have a bit of autonomy resulting in more misery for other victims: Ishaan is still firing at people (“Now, his body has contorted itself to fit, his fingers clutched around the firing lever; pulling it frantically is the only thing that will reduce the impossible heat even for a moment.”), Hasanna still turns down all the other wounded without bringing any semblance of comfort (“Hasanna’s eyes fall on the entrance to the tent, and she sees the line of civilians, stretching away into the distance. They are no less maimed, their agonies no more bearable; but there is simply no room. She tries to apologise – but instead, she closes the tent.”). Interesting is that the Fears at work still seem to search for more opportunities to hurt (“He places his hand down and it sinks suddenly into the mud; he cries out as the rusted barbed wire curls itself eagerly around his wrist, digging into his skin. Tasting fear, more wire slithers through the churned earth towards him”). Not sure about the “portly man in a tailored suit, with a blood-red flower on his lapel”’s status, though: because he’s both a very real caricature of the “powerful and those that thirst to see bodies piled high in their name” mentioned at the beginning (and indeed: the symbol puts to mind the Red Poppy, the moustache various ~war leaders~)… and also doesn’t seem to suffer at all from the situation. So did he also use to be a real, normal person, or is he just an emanation of the nightmare to remind Alexei of his own powerlessness and despair?

(-Indeed, the scene was so striking!

(MAG163) “He runs almost headfirst into a portly man in a tailored suit, with a blood-red flower on his lapel. He smiles, pale skin splitting beneath his bristling white moustache, and he begins to shake Alexei by the hand. “Good lad!” he says. “Good lad. Heroes one and all. A noble sacrifice.” Alexei starts to speak, to say he doesn’t want to be a hero, he doesn’t… want to be a sacrifice – he wants to go home. But the man with the flower reaches his hand into the soldier’s chest, and with a single, jolly motion, plucks out Alexei’s heart, and places it in his wallet.”

The man labelling Alexei a “sacrifice” even before he was dead, and wearing the red flower (Remembrance Day) while the war was still ongoing, highlighting how death (in the nightmare) was the only possible outcome…)

- So far, I found it interesting that the season has been dealing with spaces, down to the episode titles. “Dwelling” was the state of being as well as the safehouse itself, same with “A Cosy Cabin”. This episode, “In the Trenches”, felt to me like it was mostly the statement of the place trapping people, rather than people’s stories. Smirke had explained that his taxonomy had come from his own experience of the Dread Powers as something he identified as “places” in his nightmares:

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “Did I ever tell you about the dreams? I’m sure I must have. I would dream about them, you see, as a young man, long before I devised my taxonomy. I would find myself in nightmares of strange, far-off places: a field of graves; a grasping tunnel; an abattoir, knee-deep in pigs’ blood. I believed then, as I still believe now, that these places I saw were the Powers themselves, expressed in their truest form, far more entirely than any “secret book” can claim. And if, as I came to believe, the Dread Powers were themselves places of a sort, then surely with the right space, the right architecture, they could be contained. Channelled. Harnessed. […] No. No, I… stand by my work. And thus, we must conclude that the only explanation is a new Power, created from what was once others, yet also distinct. And if such change is possible, how then can any “true balance” be achieved through immutable, unchanging stone…?”

So. Two things.

* If the season keeps going with “places”, I wonder if we’ll get a few titles like “The Magnus Institute” (both as Jonah Magnus’s organisation and the building), “The Archive(s)” (… the physical department and Jon-as-the-Archive), “Hill Top Road”. At the very least, if it keeps going with places, Hill Top Road sounds like a mandatory stop… Annabelle had kicked Jon out of there during season 4, it was already a “scar in reality” (MAG139, MAG146) before The Change. How is the house/field looking, now?

* ……………. If we’re now dealing with “places”, I’m squintsquintsquint about the relationship between Jonah and the Institute/Panopticon now:

(MAG092) ELIAS: Ah, of course. Er, sometimes I forget how new you all are to this. Basira is now tied to the Institute. All of you are. Like fingers on a hand. And I am the beating heart of it. Should I, or the Institute, be destroyed, you will all, unfortunately, follow suit.

(MAG120) PETER: Oh! Right, of course! Well, you’ve successfully managed to remove Elias as the Head of the Magnus Institute. So… MARTIN: Oh. Oh, god, what does that do? PETER: Oh! No, no no no! No. Not in any, hum, metaphysical sense, no, he’s still very much the… how did he insist on phrasing it… Ah yes, the “beating heart of the Institute”.

(MAG158) MARTIN: [SHAKY INHALE] … Where are his eyes? ELIAS: Exactly– MARTIN: [GASP] ELIAS: –where they’ve always been, Martin. Watching over my Institute.

Jonah already identified himself as “the heart of the Institute”, refused to let it go, presented it as “his” Institute, and was getting his powers from his body that remained inside of the Panopticon. Could it be possible that, in the nightmare logic, he has now fused with the building, is the building itself?

- I was fearing that this season would hit too close, got a moment of “Oh, that was okay actually? And intense and pretty!” after the episode, and then… for once, it didn’t really leave something in me, and I have to admit that no, actually, the episode didn’t really work for me, that the “statement” didn’t leave me with many emotions. It’s a cascade of very striking and beautiful pictures, so maybe it felt too saturated? But I think that it’s mostly because… the episode didn’t make me feel like “people aside from the main characters” had the right to be their own individuals: I felt like the four vignettes (Charlie’s, Ishaan’s, Hasanna’s, Alexei’s) composing the “statement” could have been… anyone’s, put in that same situation. You could move a character and put it in the shoes of another on that battlefield, and nothing significant would really change in the flow of words. Combined with the fact that these people weren’t choosing to tell their nightmares/stories (they weren’t coming to Jon, they weren’t aware of him, they weren’t giving the stories more or less on their terms), that it wasn’t even about preserving/honouring the people who are trapped, but that it was entirely down to Jon’s inability to hold on any longer, that it was all about how It Was Too Hard On Jon And That He Had To “Let It Out”… eh. It felt too voyeuristic and a bit gratuitous? I’m aware that it’s fitting for a world where Beholding is watching, and that Jon is, after all, an avatar of The Eye; it’s still not something that I find super interesting in itself when main characters are allowed to have some freedom and individual traits, especially when the series’ strong forte was precisely… each statement-giver feeling like they were their own person, with their own life and quirks and stories. And this statement fails to give me much of that feeling ;; (Plus, I’m… a bit surprised that we had four characters, 3 men and only 1 woman, who is a passive nurse when all the others were soldiers. It’s a nightmare, it didn’t need to be logical, and yet it felt like it went casually and very blatantly sexist? I know that “women have the right to be gored and traumatised on a hellish battleground too” is an odd thing to say, but also, equality?)

Crossing fingers that I get the emotional charge in later episodes, but yeah, as it stands right now the road trip format is a bit doomed to leaving me indifferent if it remains Martin&Jon journeying in the same conditions: the season began with extremely strong personalities and individualities (through tapes, people who had been lost: Sasha, Tim, Gertrude, Leitner, Gerry), Jon and Martin are clearly their own persons… and so far, that’s it. “People” feel like “undistinguished people” outside of them, and I’m not too fond of that…

I’m aware that it might be a point being progressively introduced into the show, and that’s how first-person nightmares work, too: you’re “you” and at the same time, you’re entirely rewritten and could be anyone else, just experiencing things. It also follows the desensitisation already explored in season 4 – Martin’s concern in this episode felt very performative, staying on the surface of things (being polite, being aware that it’s bad for the people involved; but he didn’t sound crush or heartbroken for them either, didn’t try to push Jon to do something to help them), which might tie in with his Lonely experience, while Jon is used to Watching Nightmares in his own dream zoo (and attacked people last season), so it makes sense that both of them wouldn’t really manifest actual empathy faced with this sort of things. It makes sense; but it’s still not something I find compelling in itself if the bottom line is that individuals are becoming an indistinct blob of people stripped of their uniqueness in the new world and that’s just the way it is. (The fact that the only main characters “out of the box” that we’re following right now are both male doesn’t really help ^^”)

- … So. Lot of focus is given to the tape recorders spawning around Jon (and now Martin), their behaviour is acknowledged as odd, so we might get an answer about them soon… but I’m really curious about the fact that with MAG162 and MAG163, it feels like the new statement-format is a entirely new activity for Jon:

(Season 5 trailer) [CLICK–] [APOCALYPSE SOUNDSCAPING] ARCHIVIST: [SLOW BREATHING] [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … What? What do you want? … The world is…! It’s over. You’ve won. What can you possibly still need to hear?

(MAG161) MARTIN: Hey – when, when did you start recording? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: I… didn’t. MARTIN: [TENSE EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: I only brought one, and I’ve been using it to play the tapes. MARTIN: Oh. [INHALE] That’s not a great sign. ARCHIVIST: No… No it’s not.

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “This place wishes to be our tomb. But The Eye does not wish that. No. [STATIC RISES] The Eye wishes instead that it be my chrysalis. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] It is time that I emerge…” […] ARCHIVIST: This cabin. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] It’s not right. And, when I thought that, I–I felt… It, it all poured out of me down… into the tape. MARTIN: [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: A–a–an–and it… felt good. It–it felt… right. MARTIN: Okay. [BREATHES IN] So you’re recording again? ARCHIVIST: I might need to. If we’re going to make it…! […] MARTIN: You’re… taking the recorder? ARCHIVIST: Uh, just in case I need to… vent. Again, it… [INHALE] it helps.

(MAG163) MARTIN: J–Jon, enough! Enough! [STATIC FADES] … Please don’t tell me these things. ARCHIVIST: I… I’m sorry, I– There’s just so much! There’s so much, Martin, and I know all of it, I can see all of it, and I– It’s filling me up, I need to let it out! MARTIN: I’m sorry, but tough. Okay? Tha–that’s not what I’m here for. [VOICE IN THE DISTANCE: “No… No!”] MARTIN: I can’t be that for you, I–I just can’t. ARCHIVIST: [QUIET] I… I know. [SILENCE] I–I’ll use the tape recorder…! [PLASTIC OF A TAPE] I just… [INHALE] You probably want to wait outside. […] End recording…! [CLEARS THROAT] [SHUFFLING] MARTIN: Mm? All done? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes. [EXHALE] MARTIN: Good.

The concept that tape recorders might be feeding from Jon’s reading is not fundamentally new, since Jon had humorously mentioned the possibility at the beginning of season 4:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: And we’ve got an audience – perfect. I thought you said you decided to throw them all out. BASIRA: Yup. And I did. And here’s another one. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Maybe it’s hungry…! BASIRA: Seriously? ARCHIVIST: I mean, I did have a statement I was planning to record.

But it’s still a new thing regarding the effects they seem to have on Jon as the Archivist/Archive. Before, Jon was reading statements to feed The Eye and himself; not reading statements resulted in withdrawal symptoms, as shown during his American trip (MAG107), with Gerry pointing out that Gertrude also needed them to stay afloat (MAG111). Now, in this new setting, “statements” are an excess that Jon has to regularly spit out into the tape (MAG162: “It, it all poured out of me down… into the tape.”). Whatever the tapes are, it sounds like Jon is feeding them nowadays (or that they’re feeding on that surplus) – and… that can’t be good, uh. What is Jon feeding, now; what is it growing into?

It also put me in mind of Albrecht’s way of regurgitating stories to Fanshawe:

(MAG127, Jonathan Fanshawe) “Again he ignored me. Instead, he took the seat opposite me, and started to tell me… a story. And then another. And another. A stream of… strange tales began to pour out of him, and I just sat there, transfixed, [STATIC], desperately wishing I had the strength of will to stand and leave, but all I could do… was listen. He told me of a seamstress, who laced her body with fine black thread; and when she pulled it all out in a single swift motion, her skin dropped away like a loose shift. He told me of a man so scared to die he spent a year weaving a rope blindfolded, so that he would not know the length, and could not foresee the moment it would tighten around his neck when he finally threw himself into the void. He told me of a fire that burns so hot and fierce, that to even know about it is enough to burn a man’s tongue from his head. He told me so many terrible things. [STATIC FADES] And at the end of it all, the only thing I could think to ask him… was where he read them. My eyes darted to the books that surrounded us; but Albrecht laughed at this, and placed his hands across a spine that was simply labelled A Warning. For a moment, he looked as though he were about to wrench it from its place and hurl it into the fire. But it passed. He turned back to me. [STATIC] ‘You do not understand,’ he said to me in German. ‘I do not read the books. They read me.’” [STATIC FADES]

Albrecht had already read (/been read by) the books, and yet was vomiting these stories. Is that the same thing as what’s now happening to Jon? It would lend credit to the idea that Albrecht was Jonah’s first attempt to create an Archivist if it’s how it usually goes: first, feeding the creature… and then, when they reach maturity, they spit out stories like eggs, made to spread the terrors and the suffering…? (I’m even more thinking about “eggs” given that butterfly!Jon/Archivist was apparently coming out from the chrysalis in MAG162. What does a butterfly seek to do before dying?)

Anyway, if Jon&Martin are unwittingly making the situation worse somehow, I’m fully expecting the tape recorders to play a part – but how could they possibly make things worse than they already are…?

- Gotta love how season 4 finally broke the shackles of Martin and his ability to swear loudly.

(MAG154) MARTIN: What, [CHUCKLING] you gotta gouge your eyes out or something? [SILENCE] … Fuck off?!

(MAG163) [CLICK–] [LOUD BAGPIPES] [EXPLOSIONS] [LOUD GUNSHOT RAFFLES] MARTIN: [SHOUTING] SHIT, SHIT– ARCHIVIST: Martin! MARTIN: SHIT-SHIT-SHIT-SHIT– ARCHIVIST: Stay with me, don’t let go! MARTIN: Oh! [LOUD BANG] ARCHIVIST: Come on! MARTIN: Shit, shit, shit…! […] Don’t be a prick, Jon.

(I have to admit that the transition from Jon&Martin’s slightly melancholic and tired scene to the battlefield and Martin screaming obscenities made me laugh because. That whiplash. A perfect summary of Martin’s life.)

Congrats to Martin for spending out the Swear Quota this season. (I feel like, recently, most “sweary” episodes tended to also get a bit more gruesome or close-to-home than usual (MAG131 with the self-inflicted injury attempt and the rib-removal, MAG154 with the abusive relationship and description of Eric’s murder, MAG158 with the gunshots, here with the atrocities of war), so I wonder if it’s a conscious decision each time, since sweary episodes will up the rating and that could serve as a warning?)

No wonder that Martin was… “not okay” (Martin-is-never-going-to-be-okay), since he really really didn’t like experiencing MAG095, already dealing with war/Slaughter-y:

(MAG095) MARTIN: S–s–statement… done. [HEAVY BREATHING & TREMBLING AS MARTIN STEADIES HIMSELF] I don’t like recording these. There. I–I said it. I’m sorry whoever’s listening to this, I know it’s unprofessional, but they f… I don’t like it. I guess we’re past professionalism now. Probably.

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: It’s okay! MARTIN: No! [LOUD GUNSHOT RAFFLES] ARCHIVIST: You’re okay! MARTIN: [You don’t even know if I’m okay], this is not okay! ARCHIVIST: In here, [LOUD BANG] come on! [LOUD GUNSHOT RAFFLES] ARCHIVIST: [GRUNT FROM EFFORT] [MOTOR ROARING AND FADING] [BATTLEFIELD SOUNDS NOW MUFFLED; SOME ECHO] [PANTS] ARCHIVIST: Are you…? MARTIN: [ANGRY SOBBING] I’m fine, fine, I just… [SIGH] How, how about you, you’re not hurt? ARCHIVIST: Uh… No. MARTIN: Good. ARCHIVIST: No, I’m not. MARTIN: Good. Good.

So. Really not his cup of tea.

… I’m not sure about this, but it feels to me like Martin’s way of showing concern or “caring” for people outside of Jon right now is… kind of performative, more focused on keeping a clean outside appearance rather than genuine empathy?

(MAG163) MARTIN: Good. Good. [SILENCE PUNCTUATED BY PANTING] … J–J–Jon, Jon, w–we’re not alone. ARCHIVIST: I–ignore them, they’re not… Just ignore them. MARTIN: … They’re not… real? [VOICES SHOUTING IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLING] No…! They’re real; they were… normal people before the– … Before me. But now they’re here, meat for the grinder. I just mean there’s no point… talking to them. MARTIN: Don’t be a prick, Jon. Hey! I’m, I’m sorry about him. He’s–he’s going through a lot – well… we all are, I suppose, but well… “Hi”, I guess. [SILENCE] Hello? […] It’s dangerous. Could… get yourself blown up, like all these poor… [PLASTIC RATTLING] Who d’you think they were? Really don’t see why [they] can’t just… go round, picked a better place to… [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] [SIGH] I guess there… aren’t really any “better” places anymore, are there? [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] It’s all this. Or worse, or… or different.

Which doesn’t mean (as Martin is showing) that it can’t lead to a conscious decision to be at least polite/not make things worse. But I’m thinking that Jon wasn’t exaggerating when he told Martin that “some of us weren’t able to cut ourselves off from the world before it ended” (MAG161), and that Martin… doesn’t really feel much for people themselves?

- When Martin Blackwood says stop, Beholding…

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: They won’t hear you, Martin, they’re all… too busy waiting to die. MARTIN: Jon… ARCHIVIST: They sit here – [STATIC RISES] the image of everyone they hold dear locked in their mind, knowing they’ll never see them again. Waiting for the order; dreading the bullet or the drone or the barbed wire that will tear them to shreds and leave them nothing but a bloody– [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] MARTIN: J–Jon, enough! Enough! [STATIC FADES] … Please don’t tell me these things.

… STOPS. I love how it felt like Martin was able to tame the evil all-knowing god just by shouting at it, the static receding was an amazing bit!!

I’m REALLY GLAD that Martin faced Jon firmly about what he didn’t want to “give”, about his boundaries and what would be damaging to him, and that Jon manoeuvred around it to find a solution acceptable for the both of them!

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: I… I’m sorry, I– There’s just so much! There’s so much, Martin, and I know all of it, I can see all of it, and I– It’s filling me up, I need to let it out! MARTIN: I’m sorry, but tough. Okay? Tha–that’s not what I’m here for. [VOICE IN THE DISTANCE: “No… No!”] MARTIN: I can’t be that for you, I–I just can’t. ARCHIVIST: [QUIET] I… I know. [SILENCE] I–I’ll use the tape recorder…! [PLASTIC OF A TAPE] I just… [INHALE] You probably want to wait outside. MARTIN: … Hum, no?! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Well… Put your fingers in your ears then, I, I suppose. MARTIN: [SNORT] Fine, and what about them? ARCHIVIST: … They don’t even know we’re here. We’re not part of their nightmare. [DRIP] MARTIN: … Right.

The trailer and first episode had worried me because of the way Martin was back to being a caretaker of a moody&difficult person, with Jon push-pulling and Martin accommodating. The cabin bubble broke last episode (and Martin revealed that he had already begun planning), I’m glad it’s continuing in that vein of communication and respect! Oppositions without big conflicts nor relationship drama! They’re surprisingly healthy in the middle of the apocalypse!

- Regarding the liquid sounds in the last scene, was it actually the lake mentioned at the beginning of the statement? Since we could still hear bagpipes in the distance, that area might have still been influenced by the trench:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: “Once, it was a thin metal landing craft, drifting slowly through a fetid lake. The waters were red and black by turns with blood and oil and the floating bodies of those before them, that were pushed aside by the boat’s wake.” […] [CLICK–] [BAGPIPES IN THE DISTANCE] [BODIES WADING THROUGH LIQUID] ARCHIVIST: [DISTANT] Try to keep up! MARTIN: Yeah, yeah… [INELEGANT DEJECTED SPUTTERING]

So, if they were crossing the lake of blood and oil and floating bodies – yikes, Martin, what is your life. (I LOVE how Done Martin sounded with the whole thing.)

- Another bit in the saga of Martin having a special relationship with the tape recorders, and directly talking to them / expressing concern for them / asking them questions!

(MAG039) TIM: Why do you have a second tape recorder, Martin? MARTIN: Oh, um… well, I’ve been using it to record myself. I write poetry and I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm.

(MAG098) MARTIN: Huh. Yeah, y’know, y’know what? A little privacy would be nice sometimes, okay? Not everything’s for you! You don’t need to listen to everything that we– … Alright, you know what? Y’know what… If you’re that eager, fine.

(MAG102) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: You’re sure you don’t mind? MARTIN: No, no, no, it’s fine, I’ve… I’ve kind of stop noticing if I’m honest. They just sort of… turn themselves on these days.

(MAG118) [CLICK–] MARTIN: [INHALES] Are you listening? … Good. Case… 0071304. Statement of… Ivo Lensik. [BREATHES] [LIGHTER FLICKED ON] All right. [BURNING SOUNDS] [EXHALES DEEPLY] Statement ends, I guess. […] ELIAS: You might want to turn the tape off, Martin. [CLICK.] [CLICK–] MARTIN: Mm! Sorry. Looks like it wants to know what’s going on.

(MAG126) [CLICK–] [CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] [TYPING SOUNDS] MARTIN: [SIGH] [MOUSE-CLICK] … Oh. Hello. [MOUSE-CLICK] Haven’t seen you in a while. [TYPING] … Really? I mean, it’s just admin. It’s not exactly thrilling listening. [SILENCE] Alright, fine. Whatever. You do you. [MOUSE-CLICKS] Spool away, I guess. [MOUSE-CLICK] Just, you know – let me know if you need some more batteries or something. [EXHALE] [FIRM TYPING] [SILENCE] … It’s because he’s back, isn’t it. [MOUSE-CLICK] [SIGH] He’s back, so now you’re going to be… around, again. Listening in. [MOUSE-CLICKS] [HUFF] You missed him, didn’t you. … Yeah. … [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] Yeah, me too.

(MAG154) [CLICK–] [CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] [TYPING SOUNDS] [COMPUTER MOUSE CLICKING] MARTIN: Oh. Right. [CHUCKLE] Hello, again. [TWO CLICKS, TYPING RESUMES] Look, sorry pal, [SHORT LAUGH] false alarm this time…! [ONE CLICK] Oh, unless… [SIGH] [TWO AGGRESSIVE CLICKS] [TO THE ROOM:] Peter!

(MAG156) [CLICK–] [CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] [PAPER RUSTLING] MARTIN: Hm? … Oh. [CHUCKLE] Yeah. [PAPER RUSTLING] I was gonna read one. Hate for you to miss it! [CHUCKLE] [PAUSE] You know… I’ve been wondering about your batteries. Like, could I just take the batteries out each time one of you appears and just… have an infinite supply of batteries? I mean, I, I won’t, don’t worry. Don’t really have anything that needs them these days. … Also, I know there’s every chance you don’t even have any?, and it’s just empty, and… well… I’m not really sure that’s something I want to confirm. Or, I open up your compartment and it’s like, meat, or–or maggots, or something. … Mm. “Emptiness or maggots”…! It’s kinda the shape of things around here, isn’t it? Still, kind of nice to talk to some… thing. […] I’m on my own so much these days, I… just wish I didn’t like it so much. I mean, if you’ve got any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. … Hm? [SILENCE] No – didn’t think so. [LONG INHALE] That’s not what you’re here for, is it? [SIGH] No. You want this. [PAPER RUSTLING] Fine. [LONG INHALE] Fine, have it your way. As usual.

(MAG163) MARTIN: Yeah, yeah… [INELEGANT DEJECTED SPUTTERING] … Oh. Oh, hey! [SHUFFLING] [CLOSER] Jon, did you– … No. No, he was carrying his. [INHALE] Alright…! [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] What’re you doing here? [PLASTIC RATTLING] It’s dangerous. Could… get yourself blown up, like all these poor… [PLASTIC RATTLING] Who d’you think they were? Really don’t see why they can’t just… go round, picked a better place to… [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] [SIGH] I guess there… aren’t really any “better” places anymore, are there? [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] It’s all this. Or worse, or… or different. [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. [OLD PHONE RINGING] [STEPS STOP] MARTIN: Uh… Jon? [OLD PHONE RINGING] Uh, Jo–Jon, the, uh, the payphone that’s… here, for some reason, it’s–it’s ringing?

No idea if they’re sentient enough for it, but I like to toy with the concept that the tape recorders are fond of Martin because he’s polite to them. When this one appeared (and we could hear that Jon was a bit further away), I panicked thinking that Martin and Jon were going to get separated – so that a tape recorder was popping up to follow Martin personally, since we wouldn’t be able to hear him with Jon. It didn’t happen (I THINK. Jon was back at the end but? Their words were a bit stiff and Jon sounded a bit out of it?), but it could be foreshadowing that it will happen…

Interestingly: the tape spawned before the phone rang. Did it pop up because it could sense that the call would happen? Because Jon and Martin were leaving sight of each other and the tape recorder didn’t want to lose access to Martin? Only thanks to the fact that Jon was getting far away? With the fact that Jonah told Jon to ~keep an eye on Martin~, and given how Martin hasn’t been seized by a nightmare like the others (… or is he, and we haven’t realised it yet?), there is a possibility that Jon, as the Archivist, is immunising Martin through his simple presence:

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “How is Martin, by the way? He looks well. You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? [RUMBLE OF THUNDER] He’s earned that.”

(MAG161) MARTIN: … Are we still safe? ARCHIVIST: Y–yes, it… it doesn’t want to harm me. MARTIN: And me? ARCHIVIST: I won’t let it. [CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: Hum… thanks.

(MAG163) [LOUD BAGPIPES] [EXPLOSIONS] [LOUD GUNSHOT RAFFLES] MARTIN: [SHOUTING] SHIT, SHIT– ARCHIVIST: Martin! MARTIN: SHIT-SHIT-SHIT-SHIT– ARCHIVIST: Stay with me, don’t let go! MARTIN: Oh! [LOUD BANG] ARCHIVIST: Come on! MARTIN: Shit, shit, shit…! ARCHIVIST: It’s okay! […] [DISTANT] Try to keep up! MARTIN: Yeah, yeah… […] ARCHIVIST: Martin, you need to keep up. It’s not safe. … Martin? You okay? MARTIN: Uh, I… Th–ther–there was a phone – that phone. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. MARTIN: It… Yeah, it was ringing? ARCHIVIST: Oh. Right… Did you answer it? MARTIN: No. ARCHIVIST: Hm. [INHALE] Probably for the best…! MARTIN: Yeeaahh. ARCHIVIST: … Let’s keep going. MARTIN: Hm.

… How come Jon didn’t hear the phone, though, and it stopped as soon as he arrived? Because Jon&Martin could both hear and see the people trapped in the Trench’s nightmare (and their sounds were caught on tape) – why not the phone?

- Martin said “nop!” to your horror tropes, and is turning down your supernatural and likely threatening phone call. Same as when he suspected that Jane Prentiss could be behind his door, hesitated, and then never answered her knocking <3

- I have no certitude when it comes to the phone, but considering a few things:

1°) It was specifically an old tone (AN ANALOG PHONE? Or a phone imitating the old sound of ANALOG PHONE, it’s odd.) and a payphone, so falling right into Martin’s taste of ~retro aesthetic~, like it was trying to appeal to him specifically.

2°) Martin had a few experiences with phones: he dropped his, and it got used by Jane Prentiss to send texts to Jon in season 1; he received a phone call during the season 4 trailer while at Jon’s bedside (which was from Peter… assumedly); the last time he spoke to someone on a phone before The Change was with Basira, in MAG160, when she updated him about the Institute’s state and confirmed the delivery of the statements she had sent to Jon (which included tapes, that she had not mentioned).

3°) So. Absolutely no certitude regarding “who” or “what” it was (/what was happening), but thinking about a few options:

* Dream-logic: Martin asked about what the tape recorders were, expecting an answer, so the tapes tried to answer back to suggest him “better” places, since Martin was wondering about those.

* It was the Trench’s nightmare trying to pull Martin inside of the nightmare by calling to draft him, since Jon’s protection was wavering due to distance.

* Dream-logic: someone was trying to contact Martin, so they only needed to “call him” for the call to reach him, and it only happened because Jon wasn’t immunising Martin. As for that someone: Basira? Melanie&Georgie? Elias? Annabelle?

* It was a Martin-tailored nightmare trying to pull him in => a dead person calling him. (Tim? Martin’s mother? Peter?)

I wonder if that “something” will keep trying to get in touch with Martin, until he answers? (For the season finale? Or before?)

MAG164’s title is “… yeeeeeep”, no cookie for guessing what ~Smirke Fear~ should be predominantly starring in this one.